New Zealand Experiences Warmest December In 71 Years - NZ Herald

New Zealand has had its warmest December in 71 years.

Last year was Australia's hottest on record and, while annual figures for New Zealand are not yet available, the National Climate Centre says the national average temperature in December was 17.5C, or 1.9C above average. That made it the warmest December in 71 years.

Dr Jim Salinger, principal scientist for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said the annual figures would be released next week. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology climate summary said last year was likely to be one of the hottest on record globally. Preliminary figures showed the global temperature was about 0.48C above average in 2005.

Dr Salinger said New Zealand was definitely getting warmer, particularly in winter when it was now on average 1C warmer than in 1900. That was due to global warming and was most evident in the glacial retreat. "Sub-tropical plants are also surviving much longer in Auckland."

EDIT

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10362478

There will be hell to pay if those glaciers are gone.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/world/country/cntry_NZ.html

There are no hydroelectric dams on the rivers discharging from the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoirs_and_dams_in_New_Zealand

Furthermore, there will still be plenty of rain on the west coasts of both islands as high terrain there wrings moisture from winds from the Tasman Sea and South Pacific (just as there is prodigious rainfall on the high coasts of Hawaii).

NZ also has a huge potential for wind power (and some additional geothermal resources) that will compliment existing hydroelectric resources (and replace declines in NZ off-shore natural gas production).

http://www.windenergy.org.nz/FAQ/elecsupply.htm

http://www.med.govt.nz/ers/electric/wind-energy/summary/index.html

and there are no plans for nuclear power plants there...

PS, welcome back from Antarctica
:hi:

:hi:

But NZ has one of the best potentials for wind power on the (inhabitable) planet.

There's a wind turbine on the Banks Peninsula near Lyttelton harbor - I have never seen it NOT operating and it is whirling away frantically every time I've looked at it - even when it's dead calm in the harbor.

The best strategy with wind (and large scale PV for that matter) is to distribute wind farms over wide areas in order to minimize the effects of local wind (or solar) conditions, which is exactly the strategy the NZ government intends to pursue.

It's not called the "roaring forties" for nothing. As an aside, the Nimby's in Makara have finnally drivelled to a halt, so we should be getting a wind farm over the hill (up to 210 Mw, weather permitting: Not much by global standards, but enough for all the homes in Welly, Porirua and the Hutt Valley. Not a big country :)). It should take some of the pressure off the hydro lakes in dry years.

Jpak is right about the rainfall: The Climate Change Office has read the chicken entrails and decreed rainfall will increase by up to 25% for most of the east coast (where the bulk of the hydro schemes are), with a few patches on the west decreasing by 10%

electricity."

Unless the laws of physics (with which some people have little familiarity apparently) have changed, hydroelectric power depends on the weather. Reservoirs are either filled by glaciers or they are filled by rain. The presence of both depends on the weather.

We can of course, talk about wind power and speculate that wind power will work there, but, this is not the same as producing energy. If talking were the same as producing, we wouldn't have a global climate change problem, would we? We would live in the solar nirvana promised by weak thinkers for the last 40 years.

Personally I believe New Zealand has excellent wind resources and I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping they are developed so that New Zealand can stop burning the filthy fuels it burns now, natural gas and coal. However these resources are not exploited now.

The problem of global climate change is not solved by the addition of hot air. Wind energy will represent a viable solution to global climate change when it exists on a scale comparable with, say, hydroelectric, so that its limitations, environmental impact and cost can be appreciated. (We already observed some of these limitations with the August 2003 global climate change induced heat wave in Europe, which was characterized by doldrums.)

Anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists keep assuring themselves that nuclear power will vanish spontaneously and/or be rejected everywhere, just as they keep trying to claim that the solar nirvana already exists. (They also try to tell rational people the same things, but rational people don't buy it.) This is the equivalent of George W. Bush telling us that we are winning the war in Iraq. Since 1980 the production of nuclear energy worldwide has risen by almost 2,000 billion kilowatt-hours in delivered electricity.. If the nuclear industry talked about itself like a bunch of poorly educated solar rubes, it would say that it's production has "risen "by over 350%," except that in the nuclear case, it would actually mean something in real energy terms.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

New Zealand can change its energy options at any point in the future. They can pull their collective heads out of the sand or bury their heads more deeply in it. I don't live there, nor have I visited the place, but the subject seems not to have reached an irrevocable outcome:

http://www.energybulletin.net/1875.html

The extent to New Zealand, or any other country relies on nuclear power will be a measure of the extent to which it or any other country is serious about global climate change. Countries that burn coal and oil while making big unkept promises about the renewable nirvana are not solving the problem of global climate change. On the contrary, they are contributing to the problem. There is nuclear and there is fossil. There is no third proved option. When a third option exists on a serious scale it might be worthwhile to debate the subject of which technologies are environmentally sustainable. But energy is measured in generated exajoules, not generated words.

I note that there is at least one inhabitant of New Zealand in this forum who is almost as enthusiastic about nuclear energy as I am.

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

NZ is pretty much unique in terms of energy resources, in that it has just about all of them available. Volcanic islands, in possibly the windiest temperate zone, with high rainfall in the west and long hours of sunshine in the east. (And, sadly, relatively large deposits of oil, gas and coal). Combine that with a fairly high-tech but sparse population, and you should have a playground for renewable energy: Certainly, Kiwis in general are making enthusiastic noises about wind farms, and a lot of the more rural properties use a biomass/solar/wind combo to get their power, rather than fork out to be connected to the grid.

Having said that, as NNadir has pointed out, their is still a sizable chunk of fossil power produced (those local deposits make it too damn easy) that accounts for just over a quarter of the electricity. And of course nearly all the transport, although small-scale bio-diesel producers have been popping up like daisies in the last 6 months.

I would hope that fossil can be phased out with the current investment in wind and geothermal that seems to be going on, but we'll have to see: If not, I'd rather see us switch to nuclear power than keep burning stuff out of the ground: Although I can guarantee the government that instigates a nuclear program won't be in power for the next term. The usual miseducation, coupled with the unfortunate incident with the Rainbow Warrior and the number of fused glass atolls in our "local" patch of sea have made the natives very twitchy about the N-word.

Which brings me round to why I cheerfully support nuclear power over the alternatives: If Kiwis, with all their resources, can't produce their power from renewables - at least for the moment - there really is fuck all hope for the US or China doing it.

Wind and Solar have storage problems that no-one seems able to address, without a massive pumped hydro infrastructure: Difficult to implement in the great plains, almost as difficult to implement in the Appalachians since the miners rubbed out the mountains, and brings all the usual caveats about building dams and flooding valleys when you've been doing so well recently getting rid of them. Geothermal is great, but very restricted by location. Wave power looks interesting, but no-ones doing it, and tidal is great so long as you don't give a shit about coastal wildlife.

Use fossil fuel, or course, and everyone gets a piece - including your great-great-great-grandchildren.

Is there an alternative I missed?